


Keelah Se'lai, Pathfinder

by littlewitchhazels



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy, Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: F/M, I'll add tags as I go along, girl's gotta find herself an ark!, if bioware won't give us a quarian DLC then i'll do it myself, liam/ryder isnt the main focus btw, post-MEA, quarian ark
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-05
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2018-12-21 17:26:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11949081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlewitchhazels/pseuds/littlewitchhazels
Summary: "Repeating: this is the Ark Keelah Si'yah. The situation is not under control. Note and avoid until further updates. Repeating..."Four months since the urgent, scrambled transmission from across the reaches of dark space warning the Initiative away from the Keelah Si'yah -- the quarian Ark, once thought to be delayed or destroyed by the Scourge -- but the source of the mysterious transmission still eludes the Initiative thus far. Now however, Nexus leadership grows restless and the search for the Keelah Si'yah and it's 100,000 passengers becomes evermore desperate with each passing day.





	1. Departure, Arrival

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to preface this by saying that the story is based off of my Ryder's choices throughout the game and that this story may not exactly fit everyone's envisioning of the preface/discovery/rescue of the quarian ark story. Either way, I do hope you enjoy my take on it nevertheless!

After all this time — months upon months of countless preparations, checks, and last minute repairs — it hadn’t occurred to the Ark’s quarian captain and her crew that they would have to change their names. Perhaps it was the long months of exile, cooped aboard a Civilian vessel with far too little room, that had made them grow accustomed to their temporary home and the name that came with it.

Now that the Keelah Si’yah was ready to embark upon her maiden voyage, it was time to shake their old names and replace it with something new. An all new commitment that made the giant step they were taking feel all too real. Standing at the helm of the Ark, an old quarian captain — swathed in green, mask framed by a tangle of tubes and wiring — and her crew bustled around hurriedly in preparation for their jump to Andromeda. Such a strange sight it was, seeing the quarians so far from the Migrant Fleet, but here they were nevertheless.

“Nila’Ras vas Keelah Si’yah,” The captain mused, touring the cockpit, “what a terribly long name…”

“No worse than ‘Qwib-Qwib’, at least.” Her navigator grumbled.

Ras laughed softly, casting her thoughts fondly back to the oddly-named liveship and it's captain. “Were you born on that ship, Yann?”

Navigator Yann shrugged, busying himself with strings of numbers and nonsensical coordinates — latitude, longitude, everything in between — flickering across his dashboard. It was an easy enough story for Ras to gather, despite his silence: Young quarian, stuck with ‘nar Qwib-Qwib’ saddled onto the back of his name until he’d finally returned to his pilgrimage and settled on something far more noble. ‘Vas Tonbay’, perhaps? That was all what she wanted to do at the end of her own pilgrimage so long ago.

“It doesn’t matter now. It’s ‘vas Keelah Si’yah’ now.”

Ras’s lips pulled into a pained smile, hidden under her enviro-suit’s narrow mask, as she stared off at the distant stars. “Yes,” she muttered, “I suppose so.”

The new name, just another harsh reminder of the people they willingly left behind. It hurt to know that somewhere, out there, the Migrant Fleet was beginning its slow crawl back to the home system and towards Rannoch, rallying their fighters to a hopeless effort that would only end in pain and suffering. Most of the Quarians aboard the Ark may have been from the Civilian Fleet, but the outcry against the war was not restricted to Ras’s ship alone. If only Zaal’Koris and Tali’Zorah had dared to speak out louder against the invasion, then perhaps… Perhaps Ras may have still been there — may have still been Nila’Ras vas Geezal.

In any case, it was done. The Admirals had decided, and she had left, taking half of her crew and a handful of stragglers with her. The only way to go was forward and into the great unknown. The ship jolted as they jumped from the Mass Relay, spat out at the very edges of the Milky Way; the beginning of their long, long journey.

“ODSY Drive online.” Called out an engineer.

“Colonists settling into cryo sleep, ready for the long haul.”

Ras made her way over to the captain’s chair, eyes skimming over the incoming waves of data filling up her screens. Notifications of power reroutes, crew movements, priority issues, colonist blocks, but nothing of dire importance. Everything was, for the most part, going according to plan. “How long until departure?”

“Projected departure to Andromeda: one hour, thirty-six minutes.”

One hour thirty-six minutes, give or take, until the long sleep.

One hour thirty-six minutes until they sacrificed 600 years, and everything they once had in the Milky Way.

One hour thirty-six minutes… It was a little overwhelming, like looking back on old memories of an age long since passed and realising just how much time had gone by. Ras grasped the back of her chair for support as a sudden light-headedness went over her. It barely took a moment for her to recover, but it was noticed nevertheless. One hour thirty-six minutes after months and months of waiting just felt like far too little time.

“Are you alright, Captain?” She waved away the concerned technician.

“Nothing to worry about, just a little overwhelmed is all. Continue.”

And with that, the cockpit went back to work as they frantically readied Keelah Si’yah for her trek across the stars.

 _We’re doing this_ , Ras thought, _Keelah, we’re really doing this._

 

* * *

 

The cockpit was eerily quiet and dim, save for the quiet blips and clicks of the dashboards and display screens as they churned out calculations and energy readings to no one in particular. In Ras’s experience, there was nothing more unsettling than a silent, empty cockpit. Though, now that she thought of it, the Keelah Si’yah itself was an incredibly silent ship. Even the Ark’s engines, massive monstrosities shoved in the back of the ship, were terribly quiet and barely noticeable.

Her own ship — no, her old ship — Geezal had been an old quarian freighter, converted into a civilian ship, with an engine that droned incessantly as they traveled from planet to planet with the Fleet. The engineers had tried absolutely everything, but nothing could get the damn thing to shut up. In the end, Ras and her crew had become accustomed to the noise. In her philosophy, sound in space — the hum of the engine, the rattle of ventilation, the quiet chatter of the crew — meant safety, and home.

But, no matter how she felt, Keelah Si’yah was her home now, and Andromeda after that.

“Captain Ras?”

She turned to the salarian medical officer standing by her side, whose eyes never seemed to leave the datapad clutched in one hand. “Is it time?” Ras asked.

Ras nodded, taking a moment to look back at the empty cockpit. Knowing that she would never see these walls for another 600 years to come was a strange fact that still, despite so much repetition and emphasis all throughout the journey since, didn’t seem to sink in.

Maybe she was just afraid of change, Ras mused, the old quarian she was.

Taking a deep breath, she did one final check over the flickering screens and settings for last minute errors before finally submitting herself to the doctor.

“I'm ready.” She said quietly.

Something about the uncertainty made her feel so helplessly small and young — wholly unprepared for what to expect next. Perhaps she still thought that this was all a dream, that she would wake up aboard her old ship, drifting amidst the Fleet, jumping systems rather than entire galaxies.

The doctor led her through twisting hallways, so clean and different compared to those of repurposed quarian ships, past hallways of empty rooms and piles upon piles of storage crates designed with seemingly every species in mind. Large, wide hallways for the lumbering forms of elcor, luminescent strips of light along the walls for hanar, intricate temperature control for the handful of drell who signed on for the Initiative. Whilst the blueprints themselves had been quite impressive, Ras couldn’t help but stare in awe at the amount of thought that had gone into the building of the Ark.

She made a mental note to poke around the ship when she awoke in Andromeda. The Keelah Si'yah would never truly feel like 'her' ship, not like Geezal, until she knew every nook and cranny like the back of her hand.

Finally, the doctor took a turn towards the tram and ushered Ras into the spacious compartment, absentmindedly selecting the cryo-bay location on the tram’s softly glowing display board.

“Captain Ras,” the doctor began as the tram shuddered into motion, “You’re medical records check out, but I hope you understand the need for extra precaution with quarian subjects...”

Ras nodded, going through the motions of the talk for what must have been the fifth time since she'd set foot on the Ark. Of course she understood, she'd lived in the confines of her suit for her entire life, but the 'precaution' was beginning to make her feel both annoyed and terribly anxious about the whole situation all over again. “Yes, and don’t worry, I’ve undergone thorough medical examination and screening prior to boarding, they cleared me.”

The doctor nodded, taking note of something on his datapad and didn’t press her any further. Ras sighed, shifting nervously from one foot to the other. Despite her best efforts, the familiar feeling of oncoming health anxiety began to gnaw away at her mind; damn the doctor’s good intentions. They’d run all the numbers, the calculations, performed every test and worked out every error. The most she’d wake up to, or so the scientists and medical officers told her, was a case of stasis sickness and maybe a bad cold to go along with it.

The journey to Andromeda was rife with uncertainty and lingering doubt, no matter how many tests or calculations the Initiative went through, especially when it came to the Keelah Si’yah. Perhaps they were stupid to go through with it anyway. Perhaps they were all blinded by dumb hope of new beginnings and the allure of discovery, but here they were any way.

As the tram slowly came to a halt, the doctor ushered Ras out of the doors quickly with flailing lanky arms. “This way please. We’re delayed as it is.”

 

* * *

 

Ras let out a long slow breath, the low hiss echoing through her suit, as she pressed the back of her head against the icy wall of the pod and let the cryo-induced sleep take her. The only time she had ever experienced such gnawing nervousness was when she had returned to the Fleet after her Pilgrimage, and when she had left them all behind. Never before had she travelled so far, risked so much, for hope.

Hope that one day they would have a homeworld; not _the_ homeworld, just _a_ homeworld. Somewhere, someday, where she could watch the sun rise not from a second-hand vid screen in a 20-year old craft, but from the surface of some planet far far away.

As the grips of her 600-year slumber began to pull at her mind, Ras let her thoughts slip back to the drifting Flotilla of ships racing towards Tikkun — towards Rannoch. Qwib-Qwib, Rayya, Shellen. Clusters of live ships she had once been a part of, all marching to war — all of them marching to their deaths to the beat of Han'Gerrel's blasted drum. But maybe, just maybe, there was a chance… A chance that they would win, that they would land upon the surface of Rannoch and drink in the unfiltered air for the first time in 300 years. As much as she damned the oncoming war, Ras could only hope.

 _Keelah Se’lai,_ she wished to her brothers and sisters, _Keelah Se’lai you crazy boshtets_.

Perhaps, when she arrived, she would send a message across the darkness of space — across the expanse of nothing and amidst the sparse stars scattered across their path to Andromeda — and ask if the mountains were truly as beautiful as the ancestors claimed.

 

* * *

 

Ras was jolted awake from her dreamless slumber by a great crashing sound and the horrifying screech of tearing metal. Screaming alarms and panicked cries filled her bleary thoughts as rough hands hauled her out of the pod. The light streaming through her mask, as filtered as the light was, seemed to blind her sensitive eyes as she tried to blink away the heavy haze that hung over her.

Her first instinct was to breathe deeply and heavily, piercing her lungs with a gasp of icy cold recycled air which only served to make her hack and cough. In spite of the discomfort, she couldn’t help but suck in one painful breath after in the wake of her abrupt rude awakening.

It didn’t help that she could almost feel her immune system shutting down as her body was drained of all energy, replaced with aching pain and sluggish lethargy, as she tried to make sense of what was happening all around her. Too loud, too bright, too much chaos. And through it all, someone was trying to call her name. Fuzzy, at first, until the muffled gibberish began to formulate into tangible words.

“Captain Ras? Captain Nila’Ras!”

She lolled her head — headscarf slipping and winding cables clattering against the sides of her mask and suit — towards the direction of the urgent voice, squinting her eyes to make sense of the blurry shape.

Tall, lean, lanky, bulbous eyes; where, oh where had she seen that face before?

“Captain Ras, can you hear me?”

As the world began to make sense again, and the discomfort of woozy sickness began to set in, Ras found the strength to slowly nod her head.

The doctor — _that’s who he was,_ Ras chided herself — muttered something incoherent to himself before slipping an arm uncomfortably around her shoulders, leaving Ras hanging lopsidedly by his side with her feet dragging behind her.

She felt terribly cold, her body shivering and teeth chattering despite the insulation of her suit. In an attempt to warm herself, Ras pulled one arm weakly around her body and pressed herself close to the warmer body beside her. As the doctor dragged her through the halls of unopened cryopods — all of varying sizes, datapad screens littered with identifying notifications and colour coded tabs — the whole ship seemed to rock sideways with a shuddering groan, ripping the floor out from under her. Ras slipped from the doctor’s grip, falling to the floor with a jarring thud, drained of the energy to drag herself back up. As numb as her body felt, she could still feel the fuzzy ache spreading through her joints and jolting her still muscles.

“No, no, no, no!”

There was a flurry of cursing and muttering, the doctor grabbing a hold of her arm once again and hauling her back onto unsteady feet. Every movement ached, and standing upright felt nauseating. She leaned heavily on the doctor, who supported her without hesitation and resumed his wonky march towards the medbay just ahead. “A little further, Captain, just a little further.”

The harsh bright lights of the medbay, despite their incessant flickering with each rumble of the ship, made her head explode with searing pain as she desperately attempted to block it out with a limp hand. The doctor lowered her into the nearest cot before scrambling off to root through loose crates of medical supplies. “Captain Ras, I need you to listen to me: We made it to Andromeda, but the Ark is under attack and we seem to be… Stuck in some cosmic phenomenon, do you understand what I’m saying?”

Ras nodded, slowly processing the new information. Andromeda, the Ark, under attack, stuck. That explained the noise, the chaos, and the lack of proper medical procedure.

“W-Where,” She slurred unsteadily, “the… The Pathfinder?”

“We’re waking up everyone we can spare — Pathfinder team, officers, priority crew members — but the medical team is stretched thin as it is.”

In the midst of the doctor’s bare-bones explanation, Ras’s thoughts wandered to the thousands of lives in her hands, still sleeping in the dark halls of the ship, as the whole Ark seemed to come apart around it. Her passengers, stuck in stasis in the midst of a crisis, the mere thought tore through her mind and clouded every other thought that came to mind. She gritted her teeth: her crew, her responsibility.

Ras tried to sit upright, getting so far as sliding her legs off the side of the cot before the doctor came back and pushed her back down. “Don’t. I need to check—“

“No,” she cried weakly, attempting to fight off the doctor, “My crew! I need to— I need to help them!”

“Captain Ras. As much as I agree, you are experiencing extreme symptoms of stasis shock — your body, and immune system, simply cannot cope with the stress — along with many, many other illnesses and bugs. We did, however, anticipate such a reaction and prepare accordingly, but I need you to stay still.”

Ras let herself be eased back into the cot, but never once let her determination stray. “They’re going to die, doctor…” She whispered, voice straining.

He was silent for a moment, preparing needles and solutions with tense concentration. “We are doing what we can.”

It sounded more like he was reassuring himself, not her.

Suddenly, a quarian security officer — from the Heavy Fleet? Seemed a little odd to see one of their numbers — burst into the medbay, rifle in tow, and came marching towards them with controlled urgency. The doctor looked up expectantly, but the officer simply shook his head. “I’m sorry, sir, Captain, we’ve lost contact with half of the Ark. Systems aren’t responding, and video feeds show glimpses of armed assailants boarding the starboard side. And we…”

“Yes?” The doctor urged.

“We have no contact with the Pathfinder. The grid has gone dark.”

Now that her mind was waking up to the horrors of their dire situation, fear gripped Ras’s heart; not only for the crew, but the fate of their new beginning in Andromeda itself and— “Oh, Keelah…”

The officer and her doctor both looked at her simultaneously, just for one brief moment, before the doctor quickly busied himself with preparing medication once more. “Captain,” the officer said, leaning in close, “What do we do?”

Before Ras could answer, the doctor pushed him away and began to plug away at the omni-tool wrapped around her wrist. “Give her some space, please.”

She could hear nervousness in his voice as he fumbled with the enviro-suit casing and tangled wires, picking through them not as the esteemed doctor he carried himself as, but more of a bumbling assistant with his first ever patient. It only occurred to Ras later that the salarian had perhaps never treated a quarian under such trying circumstances. Granted, most quarian doctors themselves never experienced as much turbulence throughout any of their treatments.

A sort of woozy feeling came over Ras as she heard a pressurised hiss, compartmentalising a small section of her suit, as the doctor administered the first of many meds into her fragile system.

After what felt like hours, one immune-booster after the other, the hazy fog hanging over her mind and numbing ache in her joints seemed to clear to a point where she could make sense of her thoughts and her surroundings once more. Testily, Ras shifted herself upright and dared to sit up straight on the edge of the cot.

There was a certain degree of dizziness, along with the dulling sensation that came with a particularly nasty cold, but nothing like the initial feeling of waking up from a six hundred year nap with a terrible flu. This, at least, she could manage and had managed countless times before. Though her tongue still felt fuzzy and all too large for her mouth, Ras managed to string her words together coherently to give voice to her thoughts and fears: “The Arks…”

The doctor and the officer, who had been standing around and pacing for who knows how long, leaned in desperately to listen to her raspy words. “Yes?”

“The Arks, the other Arks — Hyperion, Natanus, Leusinia — Keelah, what if…”

The implications of her words were as clear as day. If they were late, and there was no way of knowing how exactly the situation in Andromeda may have changed, then what of the other Arks? Were they too brutally attacked and marooned, drifting aimlessly in space as their ships were stripped to nothing? The mere thought of it made Ras’s heart drop.

“We know.” The officer said stiffly. “We’re trying—“

Another great crash shook the Keelah Si’yah, momentarily throwing the officer clumsily to the ground. Ras gripped on the edge of the cot for dear life, swallowing down a wave of nausea and fear until the ship steadied itself once more. “We have to do something.” She whispered.

Ras pushed herself off the cot, stumbling for a moment before the doctor rushed forward to steady her. “Captain Ras,” the doctor stuttered, “I don’t think—“

“We have to do something.” She asserted. “Doctor, my people are going to die if we sit here and do nothing.”

The raw fear and desperation in her strained words made the doctor’s calm facade to falter once more, his posture slumping and his hands shaking, as the heavy realisation of just how dire their situation was fell upon him again. “I don’t know what to do…” He whispered shakily.

“The communications hub,” the officer said quietly, “we sent someone to the communications hub to try and get a message — calling for help, sending out a warning, seeing if there’s anyone out there — but we don’t know the situation out there.”

Ras nodded stiffly, pushing herself away from the doctor and unsteadily marching towards the door. “How far?”

“Take the tram,” the doctor replied hesitantly, trailing after her nervously as if waiting to catch her if she fell, “follow the signs or check your omni-tool, it should be simple enough. Please be careful, Captain Ras.”

Waving the doctor away, Ras managed to get to the door without an incident. Just as she was about to open it, the officer caught her arm, but before Ras needed to exercise her Captain’s authority, he simply offered her a gun. A small sidearm, really, nothing like the shotgun he had strapped to his back, but something about the weapon felt so dangerous and unpredictable; the sight of it was so surreal to Ras, almost like something out of a vid. “You’re going to need this, Captain.”

Ras gnawed nervously on her bottom lip as she gingerly took the gun — a pistol, quarian-made by the looks of it — in her hands. It was certainly heavier than she expected it to be, and most definitely clunkier in her hands. “You know how to shoot, Captain?” The officer asked hesitantly.

“I— No, I don’t. I never had to learn how.”

He took the pistol out of her grip and held it up, and Ras couldn’t help but flinch at the sight of it raised up and ready to fire. “Hold it like this, safety off, pull this back, and pull the trigger. Brace for the impact, though, guns pack a punch.”

Ras nodded nervously, taking the pistol back and holding it in her own hands. Safety off, pull back, brace herself, pull the trigger. Seemed easy enough, in theory. Using it, however, would be an entirely different story. She hoped it wouldn’t be necessary.

Turning back, Ras looked over to the doctor and the officer — she made a mental note to ask for their names when, or if, she got back. “Take care, please.”

The doctor nodded, swallowing thickly. “You too, Captain Ras. Come back alive. Your crew needs you.”

 

* * *

 

The communication hub was going absolutely insane — readings and signals bouncing on and off, scrambling everything, and mixed clumps of nonsensical data taking over all the screens. Ras tried to make sense of it all as she stumbled past, but everything was just far too chaotic for her to comprehend. Hurriedly, Ras shut the door behind her before rushing deeper into the room to investigate further. If there was even the slightest chance that something truly was aboard the ship, Ras wasn’t going to take any chances.

As she rounded the corner to the main node, Ras saw something that made her blood run cold and colour every thought with a chilling sense of dread. Slumped over the flickering control panel: the body of a quarian, enviro-suit mask shattered against the dials revealing glassy eyes and an unfamiliar face twisted into a single expression of horror. Their bloodied hands seemed to be grasping at the mic as a single message relayed itself over and over again from the tinny speakers surrounding the panel.

“Repeating, this is the Ark Keelah Si’yah. The situation is not under control. Note and avoid until further updates. Repeating, this is the Ark Keelah Si’yah. The situation is not under control. Note and avoid until further updates. Repeating…”

A wave of nausea twisted her stomach as she stood frozen before the horrible scene, unable to even move or scream. Ras had witnessed death before — peaceful in nature, anticipated and grieved within the confines of her comforting walls — but nothing like the terrible tableaux sprawling out before her. The act was seemingly incomplete, so shockingly brutal and violent, caught in the middle of a fleeting moment of fear and desperation. Amidst the static chatter of comms and the urgency of the repeating message, Ras could almost hear the pleading cries and desperate screams of the dead quarian still ringing in the air.

She couldn’t help the bitter bile rising in her throat. With one clumsy motion, Ras pulled her mask from her face and heaved the empty contents of her stomach, ragged sobs mixing in with strangled gasps of breath as the muscles in her throat and stomach forcefully began to contract. There had been a reason Ras had never joined or become a captain of the Heavy Fleet, and many more reasons why she had made the choice to leave the Milky Way.

When her body was finally drained of all energy, and all that was left were the weak shudders of shallow breaths, Ras finally managed to gain a degree of control over her body once more and used every drop of willpower in her body to not turn tail and run. Instead, she took on slow step forward after the other towards the control panel, and towards the body.

All she could do in that moment was move forward and hope to whatever gods were out there that the same fate wouldn’t befall the rest of her crew. Or the rest of the Arks, wherever they were.

That was when she heard them: the heavy footfall and guttural cries of harsh language echoing through the hallways. Almost instinctively, Ras collapsed to the floor, pistol clattering by her side before she scooped it up once more, and dragged herself into cover.

Ras pulled herself close to the panel, keenly aware of the stiff body pressing against her own, as to not alert the lumbering presence outside the door, her breaths — echoing so loud in the close space between her face and her mask — coming in short bursts as a wave of adrenaline and fear surged through her body. With shaking hands, Ras clasped the pistol close to her chest, fumbling with the trigger, as she tried desperately to remember how to use the blasted thing.

_Oh, Keelah; they’re here, they’re here, they’re here!_

“Repeating, this is the Ark Keelah Si’yah. The situation is not under control. Note and avoid until further updates. Repeating, this is the Ark Keelah—“

_CRASH!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This ended up way longer than I planned... Hope you enjoyed! Any tips, comments, corrections concerning the lore/general universe would be much appreciated, I did my best to fit the story of the Keelah Si'yah into the ME canon (and from what we know about quarians themselves) so hopefully it all works out. Updates may come a little slow, but I'll try my best to get them out and figure out an update schedule soon!


	2. Repeating

“Repeating, this is the Ark Keelah Si’yah—“

Sara Ryder sighed heavily, rewinding the recording back to the beginning for what must have been the hundredth time that sleepless night. Over and over again, she repeated the process of listening and rewinding, listening and rewinding, listening and rewinding until the words seemed to merge together into a mess of incoherent noise.

She’d even resorted to more desperate measures that felt more like something straight out of a campy action vid she’d watch with her brother or Liam than the actual stagnant reality of comm decryption: Played it backwards, sped it up, slowed segments down, brought the volume up and down until she either had to shove herself right up to the speakers to hear anything or physically recoiled away from her desk from the obnoxiously loud volume.

With each inevitable rewind, Sara found herself obsessing over each and every little detail — background noise, the quarian’s urgent voice, the vague descriptions of chaos aboard the Ark — as if, on her thousandth listen, she would uncover something new that would finally crack the mystery of the quarian Ark. But no matter how many times she tried, Sara simply came up with nothing at all. No matter how many times her fruitless attempts came up with nothing, she still found herself becoming more and more worked up over the whole situation.

“Repeating, this is the Ark Keelah Si’yah. The situation is not under control. Note and avoid until further updates…”

Hesitantly, Sara paused the recording. It took almost all her willpower to rewind the damn thing again and direct her attention elsewhere, or at least as far away as she dared to drag herself away before inevitably settling into the repetitive cycle again. Sara quietly shuffled her chair over to SAM’s glowing display, propping her head against her hands as she stared blankly at the mass of holographic blue data. “Are you sure there’s nothing more you can do, SAM?” Sara whispered.

SAM flickered. “I’m sorry, Sara. I’ve cleared the signal up as much as I can. However, as per your request, decryption of the transmission is high on my priority list and currently in process.”

Nodding wordlessly, Sara let her head slip from her palms and rest her forehead gently against the messy desk. She knew what the answer would have been long before she asked, but she couldn’t help but feel even more defeated than before. “Okay, just… Keep at it.”

There was a pause — a very ‘human’ pause. “I’m sorry, Sara.”

“It’s okay.”

Really, it wasn’t. She couldn’t even begin to describe the way it all ate away at her in the dark of the night, when the only things she had to distract herself were a couple of old vids and saved emails from weeks ago. The question of the quarian Ark hung over her head and lingered in the back of her mind like a dark cloud that just never seemed to go away, waxing and waning throughout the day until finally cornering her when she was all alone with nothing but her thoughts. So many questions, not enough answers. What happened to the Ark? Where was it? How long had they been in Andromeda? Was anyone even alive?

When they’d first heard the transmission, Sara thought it was a miracle. That day had been one of new beginnings and surprising developments, which they all desperately needed, and to top it all off with news of the Keelah Si’yah was like a godsend. And whilst the comms specialist had urged her to keep it quiet, Sara — damn her big mouth — had just gone off and blabbed. A stupid move, in retrospect. She couldn’t help it, though, and nor could she help the inflated confidence she had in herself to bring them home.

She could still recall, clear as day, the shift in Tann’s usually haughty expression as she stumbled over her words excitedly and broke the news of the Keelah Si’yah’s transmission. She should have guessed it would only a matter of time before the news spread like wildfire aboard the Nexus, all the colonists clamouring for any scraps of new information or plans of immediate action. All the attention had made her feel… Good. But only momentarily. It wasn’t like there was anyone to impress, by breaking the news like that, and her role in the Initiative had already earned her considerable notoriety (not that legendary status was her ultimate goal), and yet Sara had gone and done it anyway. What a dumb decision that was.

And now, here she was, paying the price for her impulsiveness.

Sara straightened herself up once more, leaning back on the chair and stretching her stiff limbs out underneath the crammed desk, desperately seeking a distraction before she inevitably lulled herself back into the cycle of repeating the transmission over and over and over again.

Waking up an unsuspecting crew mate would just be cruel, and she Sara didn’t exactly have a ‘late-night buddy’ anymore since Lexi had gone on her crusade to make sure Gil actually slept for the recommended eight hours; Sara was sure he’d still risk late night tinkering, but she didn’t want to be on the receiving end of Lexi’s ire. Maybe it was about time that she cleared away the coffee mugs and datapads, accumulated over days and nights of nonstop searching and theorising, that cluttered her desk. Maybe she just needed another coffee. At least it would be something to keep her mind off of it all.

Slowly, Sara pushed herself off her chair and began to lazily push her datapads aside to reveal the smooth surface of her desk that hadn’t seen the light of day (or whatever equivalent there was out in space) in forever. “Hey, SAM,” Sara called out, scooping up two mugs in her hands, “give me some facts about Earth?”

“Are you sure you would not rather test my humour function further?”

Sara laughed, flashing a tired smile at SAM’s display. “Maybe later. I think you’re doing fine for now.”

“Very well, shall I restrict my fact databases to just Earth or the entire Local System?”

“Local System, too, please.” Sara said quietly.

“One moment, Sara…”

 

* * *

 

From out of the Tempest’s viewing windows, wrapping across the communications area, Sara could already see Nexus inhabitants gathering at the doors of their airlock. It wasn’t unusual to see clusters of people crowding around the Tempest’s docking bay, clamouring for the latest feats of the human Pathfinder and her team, but nowadays the whole concept just unsettled Sara. It was somewhat unnerving to have all eyes on her again, scrutinising her every move, even if the circumstances in Andromeda were completely different to that in the Milky Way.

At least this time she didn’t have nosy assholes snooping around for information on her father’s ‘dirty research’, trying to get a rise from her through snide comments about her character and family background.

Lost in thought, she almost didn’t hear as Liam walked up behind her and leaned on the railing beside her. Sara jumped as his hand brushing against hers jolted her out of her thoughts, though her irritation quickly fizzled out in the face of friendly conversation and good company. In an almost subconscious gesture, Sara reached up and tucked away the stray wisps of hair tickling her cheek behind her ear.

“Looks like we have fans.”

Sara scoffed, “Don’t flatter yourself, Kosta,” she joked playfully, though her words felt painfully empty.

She looked over the crowds again hesitantly, knowing exactly what kind of questions they wanted answers to, and she didn’t have anything. Four months, and all her efforts had been completely and utterly fruitless. Sometimes she wondered if the same went for the other Pathfinders; god knows they already had enough crap to deal with.

Taking a deep breath, Sara rehearsed the words over and over again in her head: _We still don’t know anything, other than what we’ve heard, but the Pathfinder team is trying their best to locate the Keelah Si’yah and bring them home._ It sounded all well and good, but Sara just couldn’t help but feel nervous. She hated having to make such stuck-up statements, but Tann had insisted on making sure she didn’t get the people’s hopes up too high. Some bullshit that was, considering just how jumpy he was at the mere mention of the quarian Ark. These people needed all the hope they could get, away from the stilted professional statements that Tann loved so much.

Tann. The mere thought of him made the corners of her lips tug into a frown. He’d emailed her a few days prior about a meeting concerning her ‘progress’, as he did almost every time she planned to visit the Nexus. How disappointing it must be to hear over and over again about her failures to dig up anything about their final missing Ark; how terrible it must be to see that one dark smudge across his perfect track record. Power? Check. Food? Check. Colonies? Check. Arks? Well…

She must have been frowning, because it didn’t take long for Liam to take notice. He gently took her hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “Hey, Sara,” he tilted her head towards him, “you got this.”

Sara nodded, but couldn’t meet his eye. _What if I don’t? What then?_ “Thanks.”

“Sara…”

She looked up at him, lips pressed together in a tight smile. “It’s okay, Liam. I’m fine.”

Obviously, she wasn’t convincing enough. Figures. She’d always been a terrible liar. Liam reached up and draped an arm over her shoulders, pulling her close. Sara found herself inevitably crumpling inward into the warm touch and close comfort. He pressed a soft kiss against the top of her head and held her tightly. “I know it’s really tough, sitting in the dark, but we’ve done so many impossible things already. _You_ , especially. If anyone can bring the Keelah Si’yah back home, it’s you.”

He made that hope feel so real — so tangible — that Sara could almost believe it herself. “Besides,” Liam continued, “we got your back. If you need company after the meeting, swing by Vortex, or we can talk later. Just the two of us.”

“You,” she jabbed him in the chest, “are an evil distraction.”

Liam just laughed, and let her wriggle free from his arms. “I aim to please.”

A smile lingered on her face, her nagging doubts chased away if only for a moment. “Thank you, Liam.”

He let his arm slide loosely to her waist, returning her smile — full of warmth and reassurance. God, what did she do to deserve him? “Anytime, Sara.”

Looking back over at the gathering crowds, it seemed that more and more people had gathered during her and Liam’s little heart-to-heart. Sara sighed, already dreading the prospect of having to wade through the sea of curious colonists. “I suppose I should…”

Liam nodded, leaning in to give her a quick kiss on the cheek. “If you need anything, come find me. Or Lexi. Or Scott. Or anyone, really. We’re here for you.”

“Drinks at Vortex, then,” she conceded, “I’m holding you to that. We’ll, ah, we’ll talk later.”

With a mock salute, Liam pushed himself away from the railing and sauntered backwards. “You got it, Pathfinder.”

Sara couldn’t help but roll her eyes, laughing quietly to herself as Liam’s footsteps slowly faded and she was, once again, left in contemplative silence. It was nice to talk to someone — anyone, really — even if only for a temporary distraction. It was reassuring, though, to know that someone had her back through it all. Sometimes she needed a little reminder, and the assurance that she wasn’t a disappointment of a Pathfinder.

As she stood silent, bolstering the courage and resolve to finally leave the safety of the Tempest, a little voice echoed through her quiet thoughts. “Sara?”

She quickly swept her gaze across the now empty comm room, almost out of habit despite there being nobody around, before ducking towards the seats that lined the area. Better safe that sorry, she supposed. “Yeah, SAM?”

“After your meeting with Director Tann, there is a matter to discuss at the Hyperion SAM node.”

A flurry of thoughts and theories exploded in her mind concerning SAM’s cryptic words, but Sara reluctantly restrained herself from being presumptuous. The last thing she needed was to get excited over nothing. “Is it— Is it important? Should I go now? I can cancel the meeting with Tann if you need me to, really, I wouldn’t mind.”

In the recent months, ‘important’ usually translated to ‘relating to the quarian ark’. SAM contemplated for a moment, leaving her in uneasy silence, stiffly taking a seat on the nearly-new couches. For all of SAM’s awesome processing power, it was sure taking a long time for the usually sharp AI to come up with an answer. “It is not pressing,” SAM finally said, “though it is certainly a matter of interest for you.”

Sara nodded, unable to control the excited flutter of her heart as it became more and more apparent to her that “Right. I’ll get to it as soon as I can.”

“Very good, Sara, but now you have a meeting to attend.”

She groaned, reluctantly pushing herself up from the couch, and began to straighten her clothes. If anything, at least she would look somewhat presentable for her adoring public when she delivered the same stagnant news for the fourth time over. “I was really hoping you’d get me out of that one, SAM.”

“No such luck.”

“Look at you,” Sara quipped, “we’ll make a regular comedian out of you yet!”

 

* * *

 

“Ah, Pathfinder, you’re here. Better late than never, I suppose.”

“I’m fine, thank you, just in case you were wondering. How about you?”

Tann quickly brushed off her jab without so much as the slightest twitch in his impassive expression, returning his gaze back to the holo of Kesh flickering over his desk. “That will be all, Super-Intendant.”

Barely waiting for a goodbye, he dismissed the call; Kesh probably didn’t mind not having to extend the niceties for a second longer. Now, however, Tann’s attention was directed fully onto Sara as she shifted nervously at the top of the steps leading to the open office. She’d relayed the words countless times in her head on the way to Ops — all of the _‘yes, Director’_ s and _‘we’re doing our best, Director’_ s — but now, standing there, she was coming up blank, save for a few colourful words that Addison had informed her were entirely inappropriate.

He outstretched one hand to usher her towards the makeshift meeting room tucked in the corner of the room, of which he’d set up not long after news of the quarian Ark broke out. A special place just for her, to be scrutinised for all eternity until some kett got their lucky shot. Time to sit in the hot seat.

“How are our colonies doing? I believe you just came back from…”

Sara could almost laugh at the half-assed attempt at small talk, but she entertained the notion nevertheless; it almost felt wrong to pull her punches in the midst of such thinly veiled niceties, so she didn’t. “Aya, actually. Technically not one of ours, but they’re doing well. Our Heleus ambassador says ‘hello’.”

Tann gave her a tight-lipped frown, along with a chilly silence which left no room for additional remarks. Sara nodded and quickly took her seat without another word. She didn’t need another exasperated lecture from Addison about etiquette and professionalism. Slowly, Tann took the seat opposite her and regarded her with unblinking eyes. Sara inadvertently straightened up her posture under his scrutiny.

“So, Ryder…”

“Tann.”

“Ryder,” the tone of his nasally voice warning her against any other interruptions, “any news on the quarian ark?”

Strange how one simple question was able to dampen Sara’s spirit so quickly. Just like that, confronted by the reality that she so desperately tried to hide, all of her witty remarks and fabricated statements were gone. Perhaps she should have said something, anything, but Sara could only shake her head in defeat. There wasn’t really a point in beating around the bush, or straight up lying. It wouldn’t do anyone any good — not her, not her crew, and especially not the crew of the Keelah Si’yah somewhere out in the great unknown. “No. Nothing.”

It hurt every time she had to admit defeat to Tann’s face. He nodded wordlessly, though his expression was not one of surprise. Maybe it was that little detail that made it just that little bit more painful. “We are trying,” Sara insisted, “and we have comms experts, the Pathfinders, my crew, SAM—“

“I understand that you are trying,” Tann cut in, “and I understand that you have the best people on board to help, but we need results. Results, Ryder, do you understand me? The Initiative needs more than a looped transmission and your word to ensure the safety of the Ark.”

Sara gritted her teeth and nodded, almost physically having to bit down on her tongue to stop herself from snapping back. She understood where he was coming from — she really did! — but that didn’t stop her from getting annoyed. _It’s your own fault, Sara, your own goddamn fault that you’re in this situation._ Still, she couldn’t help it. There were certainly a few choice words on her mind now, straining to be spoken. “With all due respect, Director, we have comms specialists working day and night to clear Scourge scrambling along with the quarian’s own scramblers. SAM, even during Pathfinder field work, is constantly committed to assisting those efforts. Hell, we may even have a breakthrough soon if only—“

Tann raised a hand. Second time he’d interrupted her. Drumming her fingers restlessly against her seat, Sara simply waited for the lecture to come. Instead, however, Tann looked her in the eye without so much as blinking. “We need results.” He repeated slowly, deliberately.

Bubbling anger and annoyance began to cloud her thoughts, fogging over all proper niceties and meticulously prepared reassurances she’d repeated to herself over and over again in her bathroom mirror. She was trying so damn hard, and so was everyone else involved in the mission, and yet Tann didn’t seem to acknowledge them. Granted, their efforts had been somewhat hopeless and garnered something of a reputation, but it riled her up nevertheless. They were all well aware of the need for results — Sara above all — but it couldn’t be helped, and they certainly didn’t need Tann’s constant hounding to remind them of it.

“You just can’t stand the fact that there’s one thing you still can’t fix.” Sara blurted out.

It was a childish thing to do, so stupidly childish! But, as dumb of a move as it was, Sara didn’t regret it. She knew it was true, and Tann certainly did too even if he didn’t want to admit it. Besides, she couldn’t resist snapping back, however foolish or unprofessional it may have been.

“This is not about me, Ryder,” Tann snapped, “As much as you love to skew it, this is not about me. It is about the hope it will instil if they are alive and the peace of mind they will find if— If anything else.”

Sara scoffed, unbelieving. There was no stopping her now. “Cute, but I know what this is about. I fuck up, you go down with me, yeah? Simple as that.”

Tann flared his nostrils, his eyes widening, as Sara slowly pushed his patience over the edge. Oh, how she revelled in it. Not for long however, as Tann took a breath and leaned in close. “There are salarian scientists on that Ark, Ryder. As you’ve shown so much disregard for my people before I doubt such a trivial detail will make a difference, but this is a matter of both important and personal interest to me. If you continue to be incapable of producing results, I will have to find someone else more… Suited for the mission, rather than a once-lucky Pathfinder.”

“Thrice lucky, actually: Leusinia, Natanus, and Paarchero, if you were keeping count.”

Tann stood abruptly from his seat, the chair scraping harshly against the smooth tiled floor, and took two long strides to reach the entrance of his office. “I will not repeat myself again, Ryder. Consider yourself dismissed.”

_Thank goodness for that_ , Sara thought spitefully, slowly standing from her chair and making her way across the open room. She didn’t want to be here, flaws and failings scrutinised within every inch of her life, for another second. Quite frankly, it would have probably only taken one or two more snide comments before she leapt out of her chair and walked out on her own volition.

“Have fun playing counsellor, Director.”

Sara didn’t even hear what Tann said next, or if he said anything at all, she just marched out of his office and through the Pathfinder HQ without another word. As she stomped through Ops, she quickly ducked in a corner to take a shuddering breath and fight off the urge to scream, or cry, or both — just a moment or two to compose herself. It was all just too much.

Without thinking, Sara pulled up her contacts list on her omni-tool and scrolled through the list of numbers, names, and nicknames until she found the one she wanted. Thank god she didn’t have to wait long for an answer, or else she might’ve gone insane from the thoughts bouncing around in her head. “Hey, Sara! What’s up?”

She forced a burst of laughter, all the while furiously pressing the heel of her palm against her eyes, trying to banish the prickly heat welling in the corners of her eyes. “Liam, hi! I finished the, uh, I finished my meeting early and I was wondering—“

Amidst the cacophony of background noise on the other end of the call, she could hear a voice cutting through the excited chatter and throbbing music. “Is that Sara? Hey, Sara!”

“Shh! Yes, it’s Sara— Sorry, that was Scott. So you finished early? Great! How’d it go?”

Sara searched for the appropriate words to describe her experience, but nothing came to mind. ‘Awful’ wouldn’t do, ‘terrible’ didn’t come close, ‘eventful’ sounded too polite; everything was either too vague, far too strong, or simply let on too much, and Sara didn’t want either. “Not great.” She settled with.

“Not great as in ‘Tann-was-being-a-pain-in-the-arse’ kind of way, or just the general ‘the-meeting-was-horribly-unplesant’ kind of way?”

She shrugged, hating the way she couldn’t help but sniffle a bit as she thought back on every single way the meeting, if you could even call it that, had been downright terrible. “Both, and then some.”

Liam went quiet on the other end. Never a good sign. “Sara,” He said softly, “you good?”

“Yeah, yeah, I just— I just need someone to talk to, so I can… I’ll see you soon, okay?”

Sara was a terrible, terrible liar, and Liam sure as hell knew it, but he didn’t push her for anything more. It was better that way, or else she may have burst into tears in the middle of her walk through Ops. “Okay. See you soon.”

Mouthing her unheard goodbyes, she ended the call with a heavy sigh. As much as she was looking forward to the opportunity to fervently ignore her problems, Sara couldn’t help but feel… Drained.

“Sara,” SAM’s voice said quietly, “are you alright?”

“Fine,” She said, letting her head fall back against the wall with a soft thud, “Just peachy.”

With one last deep breath, Sara eased out the rest of her pent-up tension and resumed her leisurely walk towards the Ops tram stop, waving hello to the occasional passerby. “If you are feeling overly stressed, I advise that you perhaps make an appointment with Dr. T’Perro before we head to Meridian…” SAM continued.

“Yes, yes, SAM, I know. I will. I just need to… I just need to kick back for a bit, have a drink with friends, maybe chat with some drunk strangers; I kind of want to forget that the meeting with Tann ever happened, for now. We’ll return to regular programming soon, okay?”

SAM was silent, a response that she took for a ‘yes’.

Finally, Sara reached the vacant tram station and gently prodded the call button. Standing there, waiting for the tram to arrive, Sara couldn’t help but think of what Tann had said, over and over again: “The Initiative needs more than a looped transmission and your word to ensure the safety of the Ark.”

They — Tann, Nexus leadership, the colonists — needed more. They needed results. She needed results, or else she might just go mad come the end of the year.

_God, what a mess I've gotten myself into._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man, there was a lot of dialogue in this chapter! And Sara's here now, though in a bit of a predicament... Either way, I hope you enjoyed! I'm going to try my absolute best to write a chapter a month, though don't hold my word to that!


	3. En Route

Sara watched from the cockpit windows as the Nexus became smaller and smaller, fading into the background of gaseous clouds that covered the planet that the giant space station orbited. Standing there, she was almost glad to see it disappear from sight and mind for just a moment before— A sudden wave of awareness washed over Sara, and she quickly grasped at her wrist to check her watch for the time. “Meeting!”

Beside her, Suvi jumped in her chair before swivelling herself around, clutching a hand over her chest “Ryder, please! A little bit of warning next time,” her free hand shifted to cautiously cradle the mug precariously balanced atop the dashboard, “I could’ve knocked over my tea…”

“Sorry Suvi,” Sara sheepishly mumbled, trying to stifle a laugh over Suvi’s priorities — the mug did have a magnetic base after all — “I promise to let you know in advance whenever I happen upon a realisation.”

Suvi laughed, easily falling into the routine the two of them had established over the past few months. “Well thank you, Sara, that’s very thoughtful of you. Now… I think you’d better get to that meeting.”

“Yes! Right then,” Sara spun on her heel to face her pilot, who had watched her and Suvi’s exchange with mild amusement, “Kallo, I need to step away for a bit, could you chart our course? Meridian, and quickly.”

For a moment, Kallo’s eyes lit up; he sat poised, words on the tip of his tongue. But just as quickly as he had reached his own hopeful conclusion, Sara watched as Kallo swiftly buried it and put on a face of casual professionalism. “Right away, Ryder!”

Sara gave him a small smile. “Thank you.”

Rapping her knuckles gently against the side of her dashboard, Sara gave a vague wave before stepping away from her station and dashing off with barely contained urgency. As she left the bridge, she could hear Suvi and Kallo diving into excited chatter over wild possibilities and hopeful conclusions that would have driven her insane if she embroiled herself in such inspirations: _Meridian? The ark? What if?_

Their voices were soon drowned out by the doors to the bridge slid shut behind Sara, closing off their little space of gossip and speculation from the rest of the world. Perhaps one of the best things about the ship were all the odd discoveries she had come across about the Initiative and her crew by simply standing in the middle of Suvi and Kallo’s ongoing conversations, absorbing little tidbits of gossip and missed moments of hilarity aboard the ship. Speculation about the Keelah Si’yah, however, she preferred to keep away from.

The Tempest was strangely deserted, with everyone squirrelled away in their own little hidey-holes throughout the ship, making her walk to the communication hub all the more lonesome. Sad, really, they’d all been so preoccupied of late that she barely had the time to sit around and chat with her crew. Besides, there were things she wanted to discuss concerning their search with parties of interest — Gil, Jaal, Vetra, and such. She supposed it would simply have to wait until later.

Sara almost leapt up the sloping ramp towards the meeting room, eyes flicking down to her watch every now and then. Three minutes late. Soon to be four. Finally at the top of the ramp, Sara pushed herself off the railing and propelled herself towards the round table in the middle.

Making a pass over the comm hub’s computer, Sara brushed her fingers over the pending vidcall icon flickering in the middle of the screen and took her place at the table. Beside her, the figures of Hayjer and Sarissa flickered to life at their own respective sides of the table. The way their heads simultaneously swivelled over to Sara seemed to indicate a disruption in their conversation. “Ah, Ryder,” Hayjer said, his tone far more peaceable than the following words would imply, “nice of you to join us.”

Sara bowed her head a touch, running a hand through her hair in an tired gesture. “Sorry about that, I was a little caught up in some business.”

Sarissa nodded, eyes trailing over to where Avitus should have been at their table. A hand lazily indicating towards the still empty spot. “One more to go.”

Hayjer hummed absentmindedly, looking off and silently indicating to some unseen crew member; it seemed that a Pathfinder’s work was never done. Rather than commenting, Sara took the salarian’s lead and remained silent — patiently waiting for Avitus to answer the call.

It didn’t take long for Avitus’s image to flicker into view, mid-sentence. “—Them that we are checking the system too. Yes, yes, I’ll let them know.”

Avitus sighed, his holographic image leaning heavily against the side of the table. “I apologise for that. Things have been hectic around here.”

“Still looking for your people?” Sara asked quietly, as if they were in the midst of a private conversation.

The turian Pathfinder gave a resigned nod. “Amongst everything else. Just the last few stragglers is all, and then it’ll be done. With the help of the Nexus and scattered colonists, we should be able to investigate all the sites within the next few weeks. If anything, it’s closure.”

They all knew how taxing the search for the Natanus pods was on Avitus, especially considering the tragedy that befell the ark upon its arrival to Andromeda. Between crashing into the Scourge and being overrun by kett, it seemed that everyone’d had a bad introduction to Heleus. Sara could only imagine what challenges the quarian was facing at this very moment, somewhere out there, facing the unknown enemy alone.

“So,” Sara began, “what else’s going on around Andromeda, then? Anything we should be aware of?”

Raising his omnitool to the computer, Hayjer pulled up a map of Heleus that manifested above the centre of the table — flickering blue, cut through with bright threads of light. “We’ve been mapping paths through the Scourge,” Hayjer explained, “thanks to the insight of your pilot, Ryder, we’ve been able to plot routes throughout for easier navigation, amongst other things. It’s nowhere near completed yet, but it never was going to be an easy task in the first place.”

Sara leaned in to get a better look at the map. It was a beautiful thing, the way the lines intermingled with the holographic stars and through the patchy haze that represented the Scourge. She could just about follow the lines to loop around the entire expanse of Heleus. “Have you sent this back to the Nexus?”

Hayjer nodded, tapping away at his omnitool and minimising the map to leave the space above the table empty. “More convenient supply chains for colonies are being set up as we speak. And I’ve sent it along to you all, for the benefit of your personal missions.”

The other Pathfinders expressed their thanks; Sara could almost see both Avitus and Sarissa taking mental note of and memorising the routes mapped for the benefit of their own missions. She’d have to let Kallo know, it always put a smile on his face to know that the invaluable knowledge he had concerning the Scourge and navigation of it was continuing to help the Initiative.

Sara turned to the asari Pathfinder, “Sarissa?”

“We’ve been hunting down kett.” She said plainly, spitting out the last word like a curse.

They all turned to her incredulously. Sure, they had heard reports of the occasional attack, but for a Pathfinder — an asari huntress no less — to take interest in such a case? That called for some suspicion. “Kett? I thought we dealt with them on Meridian?”

Sarissa exhaled sharply through her nose, as if angry with herself for how much she didn’t know; a feeling Sara knew all too well. “At first we thought they were just stragglers, still swept up in the Archon’s vision, but apparently not. There’s something going on, and I don’t like it.”

Across from her, Avitus crossed his arms in deep thought, his expression pensive. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

Sara bit the inside of her cheek, considering the possibility of something even bigger going on alongside all the other problems they were facing. Worse yet, she had a sneaking suspicion of what may be going on concerning the reported resurgence of kett. “You know, this could be related to the transmissions I found on Voeld a little while back,” Sara suggested, “I’m sure I briefed you about it previously, but I can send you the comms just in case.”

Sarissa nodded. “That would be incredibly helpful, Ryder. Thank you.”

“And what about you, Ryder? Any luck with the quarian ark?” Avitus asked.

Sara involuntarily stiffened. Put on the spot in that moment, she tried to paint it all with at least a shred of hopefulness, but her words came out more desperate than anything. “We may have a lead, I think. We’re en route to Meridian now to check it out.”

A silence filled the room as the conversation, and an additions to it, fell flat. All the words of assurance had been offered up so many times before, so it probably felt useless on the other Pathfinders’ behalf to mention them all over again. Hesitantly, Sara posited the question that had been on the back of her mind for the past few minutes. “I don’t suppose any of you may have seen anything, or picked up on anything?”

One by one, the Pathfinders shook their heads in resigned defeat. Inevitable, she supposed, but still disappointing. It was hopeless to think that any of them would happen upon the Keelah Si’yah by sheer dumb luck. “Right,” She said quietly, “either way, we’re going to keep looking. If you see or hear anything, you know where to find me.”

Avitus gave her a sympathetic look, which somehow made Sara feel kind of pathetic. Not his intention at all, she knew, but it hurt nevertheless. “Here’s to hoping. And if you need anything, don’t hesitate to contact us.”

She wished so badly that she could have more to say about it. Considering all of the good work that the other Pathfinders were doing across Heleus, but alas she had no more information than the last time they’d all met. At least last time she was able to bring at least some genuine optimism to the table. “Yes, I’ll remember to do that if anything comes up.”

“Well, If there is nothing else to discuss,” Sarissa interjected, “then shall we should perhaps begin to wrap this up. It appears that we all have a lot of work to do.”

Sara nodded, straightening herself up and managing a quick smile. “Yes, definitely. Best of luck to you all. Sarissa, I’ll have Suvi send you our gathered intelligence on the resurgent kett.”

“Thank you, Ryder,” Sarissa turned to each Pathfinder and addressed them individually, “Hayjer, Avitus. Sarissa out.”

Sarissa’s image flickered briefly before dissipating entirely, making their table seem just that little bit more empty. From his side of the able, Avitus gave a brief nod before leaning away from the table and disconnecting from the call, leaving only Sara and Hayjer gathered on one side of the table.

“I guess that’s my cue to leave,” Sara said, “best of luck, Hayjer.”

Just as she was about to disconnect, Hayjer turned his attention towards her. “Ryder, a moment of your time?”

She hesitated for a moment, a thousand thoughts swarming in her mind about the ulterior motive behind the question. Beneath the table, her fingers drummed restlessly against the smooth surface. “I guess? Yeah, sure.”

A few painfully long seconds passed as Hayjer silently “I’ve already been informed by Tann about my impending reallocation to the head of the search for the Keelah Si’yah…”

It was inevitable, she supposed, that Hayjer would already be — as he put it — ‘informed’ about her decisions drawn from her recent meeting. “That quick, huh? So, you know then?”

Hayjer nodded slowly, confirming what Sara had already guessed by the time she’d walked out of that goddamn meeting. “I was told you were not getting results — and we all know how much Nexus leadership, particularly Tann, wants results — and that I should ‘prepare for reallocation’. Sounds like you aggravated the Director.”

Sara gave a hollow laugh, “I think that’s an understatement.”

“Well, I just wanted you to know that — whatever the circumstances — I would be more than happy for you to join my team in searching for the Keelah Si’yah. Tann would protest, however, but I think you would be a valuable asset.”

It was a comforting gesture, and a welcome invitation, that she certainly wasn’t expecting. In any case, it calmed her nerves and temporarily put some of her nagging thoughts to bed. “I… Thank you, Hayjer. That means a lot.”

“Hopefully, if your lead is as reliable as you think, it won’t have to come to it.”

All things considered, hoping was all Sara could do at this point. “Either way, thank you, Hayjer. I’ll inform you, and the rest of the Pathfinder teams, of any developments in the search.”

Hayjer gave her an encouraging smile. “Very good, Ryder, then I shall leave you to it. Best of luck to your team. Hayjer out.” And with that, he disconnected from the call.

“Ryder out.” Sara mumbled quietly, as she too finally disconnected.

Standing there — silently, and so painfully alone — Sara once again felt the heavy weight of responsibility settle on her shoulders once more. A night out had been enough to alleviate it for a while, but it all just as quickly came crashing back down; suffocating her, clawing at her, whispering in the back of her mind. Whilst the other Pathfinders were uncovering kett plots, rescuing sleeping colonists, and mapping the expanse of Heleus, she was cooped up in her quarters playing a four-month old transmission on repeat.

With that thought running rampant in her mind, Sara trudged stiffly down the meeting room ramp to the vacant research area. Behind the doors on either side, Cora was probably tending to their little onboard garden whilst Jaal tinkered with bits and pieces picked up on the various worlds they’d traversed. As much as Sara wanted to bust in, she didn’t.

Strange how she could never bring herself to do what she’d fully expected and welcomed from them — talk, confide, work through things together — but it almost felt as if there was a mental block stopping her. Sara had tried so many times to approach them, but to no avail; it was far easier to laugh and smile than be truthful, as draining as it could be. Perhaps the only person she felt comfortable approaching was Lexi, and even then it was tough to open up. There was always this need to seem at her best and keep up the facade of a strong leader, unflinching in times of crisis, no matter the relationship between her and the rest of her crew.

So instead she carried on through the bridge and down the lower levels without a word, hearing the muffled chatter and laughter of Suvi and Kallo coming through the doors to the cockpit. How Peebee was able to work amidst all their chatter was a mystery; then again, their resident researcher had studied in far more chaotic environments than this.

Rather than going through the doors, she took a turn and wandered over to one of the Tempest’s many ladders, scowling as she wedged a foot against the side-rails and slid her way down. Why the hell the ship didn’t have any proper stairs or elevators, Sara still didn’t know, but it went without question that she’d trade off the ladders in a heartbeat if they could install at least one proper elevator in the Tempest. A climb up the ladders after a long week of running back and forth across untamed alien wildernesses was a unique kind of hell, a kind that Lexi informed was completely avoidable if only Sara would do the proper stretching after exercise.

As her heels hit the the floor, Sara pushed herself away from the ladder with practiced grace and suddenly found herself face-to-face with her brother walking out of the cramped kitchen off to the side of the hallway. The corners of his mouth pulled into a big grin, and he crumpled up the wrapper of whatever he’d been snacking on into his back pocket. “Hello, stranger.”

Hastily, Sara plastered a smile on her face in place of the frown that pulled at her features before. “Scott! What are you doing in this neck of the wood?”

Scott gave a vague gesture towards the the medbay a little further down the hall, blinds pulled down over the windows. “Check-ups, and maybe a friendly chat with my favourite doctor onboard. You know how it is.”

“Oh, yeah,” Sara said with a breathy laugh, “Lexi loves her mandatory check-ups, doesn’t she? Though I don’t think calling her your ‘favourite doctor’ will get you out of any of your required dietary supplements.”

Scott eyed her for a moment too long, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Hey, Sara, you doing okay?”

Taking a steadying breath, Sara nodded, trying to wriggle out from Scott’s hand. A futile attempt, really. “The best I can. It’s been an exhausting few days. I’m just tired, that’s all.”

Mostly true, but still not enough to shake Scott’s motherly scrutiny. He narrowed his eyes at her, sighing heavily through his nose. “Right. Get some rest before we get to Meridian, okay? Rest, shower, eat, and go talk to someone. Talk to Lexi.”

“I know,” Sara muttered under her breath, just loud enough for Scott to hear, “I got the memo.”

“I’m worried about you, Sara.”

She laughed, “And I thought I was the big sister.”

Scott didn’t smile, just frowned at the way she deftly deflected the root of the conversation. “The two minutes don’t count. Either way, when your sister is working herself to death, the little brother has a right to be concerned.”

“‘Working myself to death’, if you ask me—“

“Someone’s got to worry about you,” he insisted, “rest, Sara. Get yourself cleaned up. Eat something. That’s an order.”

Sara stood rigidly and gave a mock salute. “Yes sir, Sergeant Ryder, sir!”

Scott cracked a smile, but it just as quickly fell back into the frown that had etched itself upon his face. “Seriously, though… If you need anything—“

“It’s okay, Scott. It’s okay.”

She could tell he clearly wasn’t convinced, but Scott wasn’t prepared to try get through to her again and again. “I’ll check up on you later, okay?”

“Yeah… Okay.”

Scott pressed his lips together in a tight line before pulling Sara in close for a quick hug, of which she easily returned with equal strength. Not that physical familial affection wasn’t uncommon with them, but the gesture came as a bit of a surprise to Sara. Nevertheless, it felt nice. “Take care.” Scott whispered.

She gave him quick pat on the back before pulling away and stepping aside to let him pass. “You probably shouldn’t keep Lexi waiting.”

He gave her shoulder one last squeeze before finally stepping away. “Ah, don’t I know it. See you around, Sara.”

Sara watched as Scott walked down the hallway and turned the corner, soon disappearing from sight, before making her own way across the hall to the crews quarters. Once again, the room was vacant — maybe they were all gathered in the cargo bay, as usual, or extorted into another game of poker with Gil — which didn’t really bother Sara too much as all she wanted was a moment alone to get herself together again.

As she stepped into the washroom, Sara quietly locked the door behind her. Above her, the bright, painfully fluorescent lights came to light and illuminated the silvery interior of the room. On unsteady feet, Sara shuffled forward and leaned heavily against the closest thing to her.

The smooth metal of the sinks lining the washroom walls felt icy cold under Sara’s palms as she gripped the edges tightly. She slowly reached forward to release a slow trickle of water from the faucet, collecting it in one cupped hand. Leaning forward, Sara splashed the water into her face, gasping at the shock of cold water against her skin; nevertheless, she did it again until her mind felt thoroughly numbed.

Sara sighed, brushing away the damp strands of dark hair clinging to her cheeks. Staring at herself in the mirror, she could see the fatigue so clearly etched on her face — brows pulled into a permanent frown, dark brown eyes only emphasising the dark smudges under them. Not for the first time, Sara quietly contemplated the idea of giving up. Let Tann reassign someone more capable for the mission, let him have his brief moment of victory; what did she care anyway? But then the stubbornness came crashing back like a wave.

This was her mission, her responsibility, and in a few hours she’d be one step closer to the answer she’d been seeking for four damn months. She could do this. She had to do this.

Dragging a hand across her face once more, Sara flicked away the last of the droplets clinging to her skin. Didn’t do shit to make her look any more put together than before, that’s for sure, but there wasn’t much to be done about that to begin with.

She stared level with herself, glaring at the reflection with her best ‘Alec Ryder’ impression and stabbed a finger against the glass. “Sara Linh Ryder, you are going to find the ark, and you are going to bring them home. You hear me? Bring them home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a bit of a shorter chapter with a whole load of dialogue (I wanted to get something out and done on time bc oh boy do I have a lot of work in the next few weeks so I'm sorry if it feels a bit like a filler, but I did want to establish some things before we proceed)
> 
> btw if you want you can follow me on tumblr @littlewitchhazels! I post updates for chapters, other fics, and some original stuff there if you're interested :)


	4. Meridian

“Entering Meridian. Adjusting to gravity in three… Two… One.”

Everything felt weightless as Kallo recalibrated the inertia dampeners upon entry in Meridian, making Sara’s knees go weak as she clung for dear life on the railing that encircled the navigation dashboard. No matter how many times they did it, Sara would never get used to the feeling of her stomach in her throat even if she only had to withstand the unsettling feeling for barely a second.

Just as quickly as the sensation had came, it soon faded into the background as the world around her began to readjust to normal. When the sickening weightlessness left her body completely, Sara sent her silent thanks to whichever genius back home came up with the brilliant idea of removing any sort of discomfort that came with the ever-shifting motion of spaceflight and all it’s trappings.

On either side of her, Kallo and Suvi seemed utterly unfazed, continuing to relay information to her without a care in the world. “Approaching the LZ now, Ryder.”

Sara nodded wordlessly, refusing to relinquish her grip on the railing, as she peered out to catch a glimpse of the breathtaking view that never ceased to amaze her as they literally entered the planet. Meridian really was a sight to behold.

“Oh, wow,” Suvi breathed, “would you look at that?”

And there it was, that breathless feeling again, only this time it stemmed from something quite different. Sara stood in awe, eyes wide as saucers, as she stared at the strange yet familiar landscape sprawling out beside, below, and above her. You could never quite stop being amazed by the expansive green landscapes, nor the beautiful rock formations jutting out of the lush forests, scattered with starkly contrasting structures that now housed the future of Heleus. It didn’t take long for the queasiness to soon dissipate into quiet but barely contained wonder.

The Tempest plunged downwards, dipping towards Meridian’s southern hemisphere, the collectively appointed area of colonisation for Heleus residents. They cruised along effortlessly, occasionally flying over groups of exploring colonists and scientists as they dared to venture further and further to discover more about the synthetic planet’s mysterious origin. As the ground beneath them fell away to form a massive valley, Sara could make out a shape amidst the trees and remnant structures becoming ever clearer and closer in the distance — the Hyperion, grounded but repurposed.

Maybe it was because she’d spend over six hundred years sleeping in the depths of the ship, or perhaps because it had become something of a base of operations for her, but something about returning the the Hyperion felt like coming hope. Though, it was still strange to see it resting amidst the Meridian jungles rather than being suspended in space alongside the Nexus. With that fact in mind, there was still something more to it that didn’t quite click.

Something had changed since Sara and her team had last visited. Squinting, it soon became abundantly clear to her that there were far more buildings and settlements huddled alongside the massive ark, not just of Initiative or angaran origin. The architecture was distinctly Remnant, of all things, with all the sleek black and glowing blue trappings that dressed the insides of the vaults she’d found on various worlds they now called home. Perhaps they’d made far more breakthroughs on Meridian than she had initially thought, or knew.

_Interesting,_ Sara contemplated, _but a little frightening, considering the lovely deathtrap nature of rem-tech._

“Sara, we’re being hailed.” Suvi called over from her seat.

“Connect them through to us.”

A flash of fingers flickered across Suvi’s dashboard, then a crystal clear image of Captain Dunn came to life before Sara, obstructing her view of the alien landscape flying by her. “Pathfinder, good to have you back!”

A smile broke out on Sara’s face. “Nice to see you, too. Though I doubt this is just a courtesy call.”

Dunn nodded. “Picked up your entry and thought to give you a heads up. Our techs and comm experts wanted to see you ASAP, in SAM node; seems that there’s something big going on, very exciting. Let me know?”

“If I can, but something tells me that we may have finally gotten our lucky break.”

“We can only hope,” Dunn muttered, “in any case, we’re looking forward to receiving you very soon.”

Sara gave a small wave before dismissing the call. At this point, she could barely contain the surging emotions that were tearing at her mind. After so much doubt and failure, it felt like they may have finally found _something_. That fact alone comforted her, but also conjured up a separate thought entertaining the idea of this all being some crazy dream. It just felt too good to be true.

“We can take it from here, Ryder,” Kallo said, leaning over to face her, “I have a feeling you might want to dash out as soon as you can.”

Sara couldn’t help but laugh. “Well, at least we know your gut feeling is reliable, Kallo.”

She rapped her knuckles softly against the railing before pivoting and beginning her mad dash towards the doors without even passing by the computer to double check her emails. Everything else came second after any developments in the quarian ark mission.

As Sara sped across the bridge, she was swiftly joined by an equally jumpy Peebee who had scooted alongside her without a sound. “The great excitement!” She whispered animatedly.

“You bet,” Sara laughed, almost unable to contain her bubbling anticipation, “same for you, I guess?”

Peebee rolled her eyes, thrusting out her hands by her side in a grand gesture. “Are you kidding? The Hyperion science sector has made huge leaps in the understanding of the Remnant and the workings of Meridian, amongst other things, so you bet I’m going to be right there with them as soon as they clear us for landing!”

“Anything interesting I should know about?”

“Nah, not for now,” Peebee assured, “besides, you’ve got enough on your plate already. But I’ll let you know if it’s something really, really good.”

Sara nodded, breaking away from Peebee as they crossed the glass platform, “If it’s another cool robot or some insane tech, don’t keep it a secret this time.”

“No promises!” Peebee shouted over her shoulder.

Sara watched for a moment as Peebee continued on, a skip in her step as she basically flew across R&D, before turning around and passing a hand over the console by the door leading to the tech labs. “Jaal, you there?”

The doors slid open to reveal the angaran leaning over a jumble of welded metal and wires, some new personal project of Jaal’s that Sara had never seen before. His head popped up at the sound of the doors opening, a curious expression on his face. “Need something, Ryder?”

“We’re landing in Meridian, meet me in SAM Node, and tell Cora too.”

“No need, I got the memo already.”

Sara spun around and flashed Cora a wide smile as she made her way towards the doors at the end of R&D. She could always rely on her second-in-command to be on top of everything. “Ah, perfect! Never mind about that, but do swing by SAM Node, Jaal. We may need you.”

Jaal nodded and began to tidy away his work station, but Sara couldn’t afford to — or, as rude as it sounded, simply didn’t want to — wait any longer. With that, Sara took off fast-walking to catch up with Cora’s confident strides. Beneath them, she could feel the ship shudder as it settled to the ground and indicated their arrival to the crew. All the anticipation thrumming through her sent her heart into a flutter.

For the first time in months, Sara felt almost hopeful at their prospects. Soon they’d get to the bottom of this, and have the answers they’d been seeking; maybe it would be another failure, but Sara thought that just this once she’d treat herself with a smidgen of optimism.

“You ready, Pathfinder?” Cora asked.

Sara exhaled sharply through her nose, steadying herself for what lay ahead — joyous celebration, gut-wrenching disappointment, or maybe something in the middle. “As ready as I can be, Cora, as ready as I can be.”

__

* * *

 

The Hyperion had certainly been under extensive cleanup since its impromptu emergency landing during the battle for Meridian (a crucial even that felt like forever ago), but there were still hundreds upon hundreds of boxes strewn chaotically around the area and creating long winding paths through the depths of the grounded ship. So much for the rumoured ‘shortcut’.

More than once, Sara had to resort to ungracefully clambering over ill-placed boxes to proceed down the hall in an attempt to get to SAM Node any faster than she was already going. Cora, on the other hand, opted for following the set paths like any normal person, and kept up fine with Sara either way. It was the thought that counted, anyway.

Every now and then they’d pass a wandering colonist or technician, who’d stare with a mixture of confusion and awe at their presence. Perhaps it was the deliberateness of the Pathfinder’s movements and her insistence of unconventional routes that puzzled them the most. Either way, Sara paid hardly any heed. Her goal was singular, and goddamnit was she going to get to SAM Node this way or so help her!

And when the sleek doors to her destination finally appeared around the corner, in the midst of a beautifully clear hallway, Sara immediately broke into a sprint and left Cora in the dust. She came to a shuddering halt before the door, a sudden heavy weight hanging over her shoulders becoming ever so noticeable as the nerves and anticipation grew with every passing moment. Twice, she raised a hand to open the door; both times, she hesitated. _I thought I could do this_ , she screamed in her head, _I thought—_

“Sara?”

She gave Cora sheepish grin, swaying in place as she tried once again to make herself open the doors. It felt as if all of the confidence and surety she had in the whole situation had suddenly evaporated in a matter of moments. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled, “You know, I just—“

Cora cut her off with a wave of her hand as she came to stand beside her, and instead placed a comforting hand on Sara’s arm. “I know. It’s tough, but you never know. First of all, though, you gotta open that door, Ryder.”

Giving her one last reassuring squeeze, Cora’s hand slipped from Sara’s arm. It was a kind, steadying gesture, something Sara so desperately needed in that moment to push her forward. Taking a minute to compose herself, Sara eventually willed herself to wave a hand over the control panel and open the doors to SAM Node.

All eyes — belonging a group of comms specialists and technicians that Sara had become somewhat acquainted with over the months — swivelled to her as soon as the doors slid open, and Sara barely had a moment of silence before the people descended upon her with a flood of excited chatter and clamouring for her sole attention. So many voices, overlapping over another in a disjointed chorus, and all she could pick up from it was ‘Keelah Si’yah’, ‘distress’, and ‘communications’.

Throwing her hands up in helpless surrender, Sara attempted to fend off the endless stream of words that came from every direction to no avail. “Whoa, hang on— I just need— I’m sorry, what?”

In the midst of the chaos, a figure pushed through the crowd, and Sara was eternally grateful to see the familiar face of Rynn Gee appear from the swarm of comm specialists and techs that had pounced on her. “Give the Pathfinder some space, everyone, give her some air!”

Slowly, the talking dwindled until there was only the occasional excited whisper that escaped some excited specialist’s lips. Sara sighed in relief and immediately clasped Rynn’s hand. “Looks like you’ve got something important to show me. Information or something, maybe?”

“Better than that, Pathfinder! Though, you might want to sit down for this.” Rynn warned.

Sara raised a brow, trying to mask the apprehension that was building up in her mind. What is it, what is it, what is it? “I can stand.”

Rynn nodded, pausing for dramatic effect before a huge smile began to pull at her lips and she finally revealed her long awaited news. “I think we have a lead.”

Sara’s jaw dropped, her words simply escaping her in that moment. Beside her, Cora was equally blown away by the revelation, but she recovered far quicker than Sara. “A lead? But I thought…”

“I say ‘think’ because we’re still trying to decipher and understand the data. SAM’s been working on that, but it’s only recently that we’ve been able to get something out of the transmission.”

“So— So what does that mean? What is the ‘lead’ exactly? I’m sorry, I’m just… Wow, a lead? An actual lead? And, wait, SAM—”

Rynn laughed giddily, almost drunk of euphoria over the revelation, and patted the top of Sara’s hand. “I know, I know, it’s a lot to digest. SAM, care to explain to our Pathfinder how you managed to pull it off?”

Sara looked over at SAM’s display incredulously, her eyes wide as she ran what was going on through her head. “SAM? But… I thought you— I thought you couldn’t find anything, and that—“

“I’m sorry, Sara,” “but seeing as how emotionally draining the mission is, and how much toll it put on your mental wellbeing, I thought it best to make sure that we had a solid lead. I was not sure how you would cope with another failure.”

The awkward silence that came with SAM’s admission made Sara’s stomach twist up and brought on an urge to crawl into a corner and disappear. On one hand, she was somewhat touched by SAM’s consideration, but the fact that the AI had… Lied. Keeping valuable mission information from her at that! She wasn’t exactly sure how to feel about the revelation, but for now she’d just have to swallow the bitter pill. Maybe later, back on the Tempest, she’d have a few words with SAM, maybe Scott too. “R-Right, yes, so… Okay, um, how’d you— how’d you do it in the end, SAM?

“Compiling data provided by the Nexus science department, our on findings aboard the Tempest, Hayjer’s scans, and angaran technology, I have managed to work around Scourge interference. However, there was also the case of quarian scrambling which proved to be difficult.”

Sara nodded slowly. Truthfully, she was still reeling from the fact that they had a _goddamn lead_ , and that the AI in her head had been lying to her about it all for what must have been weeks. Maybe she really did need to sit down as she processed the information. After months and months and months of virtually nothing, and now this? “So, uh, quarian scrambling? SAM, what does that mean? I— I thought it was just the Scourge interference.”

The AI went quiet for a moment, then replaced its holographic display with an image of complicated schematics. In all her years studying tech and pouring over her mother’s work whenever she was allowed, Sara had never seen something quite so intricate and complicated. “SAM, I still don’t really understand.”

“It was the quarians who developed much of the technology on the Keelah Si’yah to suit their requirements,” SAM explained, “and quarian technology — their ships, navigation, computers, and other designs relating to space travel and location — is often developed with some aspect of AI ‘aversion’ inherent in the design. This is a quarian processing chip, which I found in the Nexus Archives to help understand the technology.”

And then a thought suddenly popped into Sara’s mind, one that seemed so blatantly obvious that she almost couldn’t believe that she hadn’t reached the conclusion earlier. “Wait, so… SAM, was the Keelah Si’yah ever built with a SAM Node that you could connect to? Or, you know, anything like it?”

“No, it was not. The concept of a sentient AI proved to be a point of contention with the quarian people.”

Rynn ran her fingers through her brightly coloured hair, dark roots showing after months of limits placed on luxury items. “Why did that never cross my mind before?” She muttered to herself.

“We’re probably so used to SAM that it never occurred to us before.” Cora said plainly.

_And there it is._ “As Alec Ryder saw the main flaw of synthetics as their detachment from their human counterparts, I believe it is the symbiotic relation between myself and the Pathfinder that allows me to… Be more ‘advanced’ — or ‘human’, if you will — and potentially bypass the scrambling.”

Sara threw up her hands to slow the voices piping up around her. “Wait, wait, wait, back up for a moment. Considering everything, how— I mean, how the hell did we get the quarians to even agree to the Initiative?”

Silence fell over the room. “Truthfully, Sara,” SAM said, “we do not know.”

A strange sort of unease settled in the pit of Sara’s stomach as she cast her thoughts to the ominous transmission she’d uncovered in her father’s secret files. Could the quarian’s motives have laid with the Milky Way’s impending doom, or was there something else that they simply didn’t know. The quarians were, after all, a secretive and reclusive people.

“There are no records or evidence citing the quarians’ motivation. Once Initiative leadership had brokered a compromise between the two parties, plans carried on as normal with the construction of the Keelah Si’yah, without the built-in SAM Node.”

Biting her lip, Sara tapped her hand against her side and took a mental note to follow up on this new mystery if and when she had time. It seemed that the questions never ended for them. She took a breath and carried on as before. “Right, okay, so… SAM, I guess over the past few weeks you managed to bypass the scrambling—“

“Attempted to, and am continuing to do so as per the mission parameters: Find the Keelah Si’yah by any means necessary.”

Sara nodded. “Right, yes, my parameters that also included that you let me know if anything was up. And from that data and all the other pieces of information, you managed to… What? What’s the lead exactly?”

Rynn snapped her fingers and walked over to SAM’s control panel, picking up a data pad that rested atop the flat surface. She tapped in a few commands and directions, causing a flickering display to manifest above the screen. From what Sara could tell, the murky fog and bright pinpoints seemed to illustrate some section of Heleus.

“We have something of a ‘search area’ that we’ve managed to pinpoint, but nothing concrete. It spans at least four Heleus star systems, but that’s about how specific we can get.”

Behind them, the doors to SAM Node slid open once more as Jaal made his way into the vast chamber. “Jaal, Jaal!” Sara snatched the holo from Rynn’s hands and brandished it in front of the angaran’s face, “do you recognise these stars?”

Jaal squinted at the holo, reaching up to steady Sara’s hands and lower them to a more respectable height for him to look over the celestial map. “This is… I have never seen these stars in my life, it doesn’t look like any part of Heleus that I know.”

Rynn came up beside Sara, raising her own omnitool with an old projection of Heleus. “I think we may have the answer to that. Our original scans of Andromeda seemed useless at first, but at least now we can map things like this. As far as we can tell, according to the initial scans, the search area is situated somewhere around… Here! Ryder-1.”

“In the thick of the Scourge.” Sara concluded, all the pieces of the puzzle coming together.

Jaal leaned over to take in the little map that now illustrated once blank spots on his old star charts, his eyes wide and a hand outstretched as he seemingly attempted to trace the long lost star systems. “Most interesting…”

Sara looked over all the maps compiled together and let out a long sigh. “By the looks of it that Scourge field is massive, just look at how far it stretches!”

“And I'm assuming that somewhere in there,” Cora murmured, leaning over to take in the display detailing their next challenge, “is the quarian ark.”

_The mission just got a whole lot more daunting_. Considering the challenge of navigating the Scourge, the obvious distress in the Keelah Si’yah’s transmission, and the potential — or considering Heleus’s reputation, guaranteed — kett presence, Sara was beginning to suspect that she may have bitten off more than she could chew. Then again, like Liam said, they’d done the impossible before so why couldn’t they do it again? It was just another mission. Just like Leusinia, Natanus, and Paarchero.

After a moment of quiet tense thinking and deliberation, Sara’s gaze shot up to meet Rynn’s eyes. “Send me the navpoints, and all the information you have about communication amidst the Scourge.”

“Pathfinder, there’s really not that much—“

“Anything!” Sara interjected, already starting to back out of the room with a hurried skip in her step, “I’ll need anything we can get! Tell Dunn what’s happening, she needs to know! And Tann, too, contact the Nexus! Hell, send _them_ the navpoints too! Oh, and tell Tann we have his fucking results!”

Sara barely waited for Rynn to respond before she started dashing down the hallway as fast as she could, closely followed by Cora and Jaal; both had learned that it was always best to keep on their toes, for they never knew when the Pathfinder would deem haste necessary.

“Ryder!” Cora called out, “just wait a moment, we need to—“

“SAM,” Sara said insistently as she broke into a sprint down the hallway, “make sure Vetra’s got us mission ready, and let Kallo know that I want the ship ready to fly by the time I get back.”

“I’ve already contacted the crew. They’ll be ready to leave as soon as you arrive at the Tempest.”

Sara silently thanked SAM, not stopping to spare a single breath as she tore down the inconveniently crowded hallways of the Hyperion. As she ran, Sara’s heart pounded in her chest like a beating drum. Each little step, as insignificant as it seemed, took her closer and closer to the quarian ark. Each little step was a moment wasted as the Keelah Si’yah drifted aimlessly throughout the Scourge, probably tearing itself apart inside and out, overrun by kett.

If there were people alive on the ark, they would rescue them and bring them home; if the colonists didn’t make it, at least they could give their distant relatives back in the Milky Way (and the Initiative) some peace of mind in finding out what happened on the Keelah Si’yah.

This was it, the moment they’d all been waiting for. After four achingly long months — full of desperation, sleepless nights, and ceaseless worries — they had a lead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> suspense!! drama!! incredibly late uploads!! sorry that this is more than 2 months late, i just had so so much work, writers block (which I'm still trying to work out of w writing for other fandoms), and a wrist injury that has finally began to heal up at long last.
> 
> anyhow, thank u for reading and i hope you enjoyed nevertheless! if you’re interested, why not follow me @littlewitchhazels on tumblr? also, if anyone wants to discuss quarians and AI (particularly with the Initiative and SAM) I'm always open to some long-winded discussions!
> 
> happy holidays, everyone!!


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